Prep recipes

A prep recipe takes raw ingredients and yields a quantity of something intermediate. Menu items then consume the prep, not the raw ingredients, which is how the kitchen already thinks.

Logging what was produced each day gives you a record of yield against theoretical yield. A batch that consistently produces less than the recipe says is either a portioning problem or a recipe that was never accurate.

The kitchen production screen shows what needs prepping based on what is on hand, so prep is a list rather than an experienced guess.

A costing model that treats every dish as assembled from raw ingredients will never reconcile with what the store actually issues, because the kitchen does not work that way.

Modelling the batch — raw ingredients in, a measured yield out — puts the model and the walk-in back in agreement.

Logging what a batch actually produced against what the recipe says it should is where over-portioning and waste become visible.

A prep that consistently yields eighty-five per cent of theoretical is either a portioning discipline problem or a recipe that was aspirational when it was written. Both are fixable once you can see them.

The kitchen production screen works from what is on hand and what is likely to sell, so morning prep is a list rather than a judgement call by whoever opened.

That matters most on the days the experienced person is not in.

A prep can consume another prep — a sauce inside a marinade — and cost flows through every level, so a change in the price of one raw ingredient reaches every dish that eventually depends on it.

A batch has a life. Recording production dates gives the kitchen a basis for rotation rather than relying on whoever opened the fridge to remember which container came first.

It also puts a number on what is being thrown away at the end of its life, which is usually the fastest waste to eliminate once it is visible.

A prep recipe with quantities and a yield is also the clearest instruction a new kitchen hand can be given. It is the same document the costing runs on, so it cannot quietly drift out of date the way a laminated sheet on a wall does.

Items assembled to order from raw ingredients — a salad, a simple grill — do not need one, and adding a prep layer for them creates work without improving the costing.

Use preps where the kitchen genuinely batches. Anywhere else, cost the item directly.